Decoding Lorca’s Poetic Realism in ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’
Decoding Lorca’s Poetic Realism
Lorca’s theatrical style blends verse and prose. His early works were primarily in verse, gradually reducing the verse to intense moments, such as choir interventions or traditional folk songs, creating a dramatic atmosphere. The House of Bernarda Alba, however, is written almost entirely in prose.
Realistic Theater
Lorca aimed for a realistic theater, presenting a credible dramatic story set in rural Spain, reflecting rural life, chores, housework, and traditions.
Transcending Realism
The realism is transcended by a symbolic meaning, elevating the work to a universal tragedy. The conflict between Bernarda and Adela represents the tragic clash between universal order, authority, freedom, and desire. The pervasive symbolism and poetic hyperbole amplify the tragedy to classical dimensions.
Poetic Realism
We can describe Lorca’s style as poetic realism or symbolic realism.
Lorca’s Poetic Language
Lorca’s poetic language merges popular taste (slang, proverbs, sayings) with lyrical expression (metaphors, symbols, hyperbole, sensory images). Lorca embodies the symbiosis between tradition and the avant-garde, characteristic of the Generation of ’27.
The House of Bernarda Alba: A Prime Example
The House of Bernarda Alba exemplifies Lorca’s poetic realism, merging the realistic and symbolic, tradition and avant-garde. It is a realistic work with poetic flights, suggestive language, and dramatic tension, marked by agile dialogue.
Sensory Connotations
The play’s poetic language is rich in sensory connotations, particularly through personification, metaphors, and poetic comparisons.
Vivid Imagery
His images are vivid metaphors (“to put out this fire that I have picked up by legs and mouth”, “Let me break this chest as a bitterness grenade”) and strong comparisons often tending to hyperbole. These metaphors and comparisons often stem from the wisdom and tradition of rural life.
Popular Language
Lorca seamlessly fuses popular language and proverbs, such as “the sky has stars like fists” and “Needle and thread for women. Whip and a mule for the man.”
Linguistic Registers
Poetic realism merges with the variety of linguistic registers Lorca employs: colloquial insults, threats, peasant slang (used by Poncia and the maid), and the more cultured, poetic language of Bernarda Alba.
Universal Symbolism
Realism embodied in poetry fuses with popular poetic language, achieving universal scope through symbolism. Lorca’s symbolism is rich: the well symbolizes death, the river life, eroticism, fertility, water life, thirst, desires, and the sea freedom and the power pole Bernarda, the heat of oppression; the whiteness of the house walls represents societal “decency”; the horse symbolizes the male stud (Pepe el Romano) in correspondence with “the mule without desbravar (Adela). Adela’s suicide symbolizes the sacrifice of a woman subjected to repression moral, social and physical way out of this pressure is madness (Maria Josefa).